The Legend tells you what the arrows í mean and how the terms "right" and "left" are used.

Outline of Tracks
and  Classification










 

Povação Velha - Varandinha - Praia da Santa Mónica

A long walk over dunes and beaches brings us in skin to skin contact with the lonelyness and silence in this landscape, with the heat of the Sahara and the fresh waters of the Atlantic. This is nature pure!

If you realy don't need this kind of romantic stuff, you may rent a quad and continue surrounded by the noise and smell of machines like in West Hartlepool, downtown London, Milano or Madrid or from whereever you ran away in order to enjoy something different. You certainly help to shy away turtles and seabirds and integrate the place within a few years into modern civiliazation and progress. Your children will have no fun when coming back to the place where once you had "fun".

5 Liter drinking water per person, on very hot days even a little more, sun protection, map and compass are paramount.

Starting point and end point is the little historical village of Povação Velha [POVVEL]. Preferrably you make a appointment with a driver to let you there very early (ideal is 06.30) and fetch you in the late afternoon (e.g. 17.00) from the same place.

A little road leads from the village centre  ç to the sports ground, from where a little dustroad starts to Varandinha ë[VARA06].
Having left the rocky valley ç a herdsmens gate [VAR05] has to be passed. Or you follow some goat tracks directly ç to the rocks and the lighthouse tower of Varandinha [VARAND] or you follow the cars' trails more to the north. In any way, some dunes have to be crossed. In the early morning, due to the humidity of dust, they are still consistent and easy to walk on, while aber 09.00 h the sand becomes softer slowering the step.

On top of the rocks of Varandinha the remains of a lighthouse tower and two gigantic nests of seabirds are found. Probably the presence of (a few per day) visitors have made them to abandon the place already. Keeping distance is a question of responsability.

Through open landscape, with a little distance, paths follow the shore ê to Porto de Farrapa [FARRAP] where the view opens over the seemingly endless, in reallity more than 10 km of Praia de Santa Mónica. Who prefers to follow it î to its very end, has to count with about 8 h to complete the round trip.

Right in the middle of Santa Mónica, where a little roads comes down from Povação Velha [SMON01] our track along the shore ends  é and we follow the Rª do Doutor. Despite its hight of only 354m the eroded old volcano chimney of Rocha da Estância gives a good impression on the horizon, right ove the white chappel of Santa Maria.

In opposite direction there appears the temptation to shorten the track by an hour and start from Santa Mónica ë in direction of Varandinha. Most likely the time won is lost again when crossing soft sands in the afternoon.